Ekbatan Town (, ) is a planned town in western Tehran, Iran. It is located approximately five kilometers west of central Tehran. Etymology The town is named after Ecbatana, the capital city of the ancient Median Empire around 700 BC. It was the first capital of ancient Iranians to be established in Western Asia, and is the ancestor of the modern city of Hamedan. The word Ekbātān is a variant of Ecbatana ( ) which derives from Old Persian Haŋgmetana, meaning "place of gathering". History Construction The construction of Ekbatan was started in 1975, for the purpose of mass housing. It was designed by Rahman Golzar, and American architecture firm ‘Gruzen Partnership’. Phase 1 of the town was then successfully built and completed by the American company Starrett, before the 1979 Revolution. At the beginning, Ekbatan was the largest property development by a privately held company in Western Asia. The constructors also owned Ekbatan Bank, which was one of the fastest growing privately held banks in Western Asia. The constructor group was owned in majority by Rahman Golzar and his family, and in minority by Mohammad Ali Bagherzadeh. In 1977, Mohammad Ali Bagherzadeh transferred his shares in the group to his children Ali and Goli. After the 1979 Revolution Following the 1979 Revolution, the new incoming government nationalized the group and all its subsidiaries and affiliates, and placed its ownership with the Ministry of Housing, it was later sold to public and is now privately owned. Ekbatan Bank was nationalized at the same time, subsumed into the new state bank created to be the successor to Iran's privately held banks. Infrastructure Phases Ekbatan has 15,500 units on an area of 2,208,570 square meters. It has three separate sets of buildings called phases (), and each phase has independent buildings categorized as a block. The architecture in the first and third phases are similar, and are very different from Phase 2. Each block of Phase 1 (and of Phase 3) has three major steps. When looked at from the sides, there are five floors in first step, nine in second and twelve in the third one. At Phase 2, blocks are designed like huge twelve-story box-shaped parts that are put together in an angle. Another difference between Phase 1 (or Phase 3) and Phase 2 is the interior layout of the apartments. At Phase 1 (and Phase 3), apartments are single-floored.